Rockets battle late, fall short agains Suns

Photo courtesy of @HoustonRockets (Twitter)

The Rockets showed flashes, but there's only so much a team of relative strangers can do together with a few days of practice.

Despite a late push, the Houston Rockets couldn't manage to overcome the Phoenix Suns at home, dropping the contest by a score of 109-103 on Wednesday night.

The Suns, fourth in the Western Conference, had to struggle a bit to start, but got out to a modest lead to begin the game in the first quarter. It was another rough start offensively for the Rockets--outside of Eric Gordon, who went 5-7 to begin the contest, it was tough sledding for the rest of the roster. Victor Oladipo was 2-8 at the first quarter's conclusion.

Houston kept it close in the first half of the second quarter, but an 8-0 run midway through gave Phoenix a double-digit lead in the waning minutes of the quarter. A large part of that deficit was how little threes the Rockets made; a mere five after two quarters of play.

Things looked to be getting out of hand for the Rockets in the opening minutes of the third, a stretch that saw Phoenix take a 20 point lead. Chris Paul and Deandre Ayton went to work on the pick-and-roll action, abusing DeMarcus Cousins in the mid-range.

However, Christian Wood, who scored 10 points in the third, willed the team back into the game and cut the deficit down to seven.

Houston, withstanding an early flurry of points in the fourth quarter, managed to cut the deficit all the way down to two late in the game, but missed shots and some clutch shooting from the Suns' Devin Booker would ice the game for the Suns.

Still, it was another valiant effort for the Rockets, who were once again playing without John Wall and Danuel House Jr., two would-be starters in a lineup that still isn't quite used to playing with each other. Despite the average shooting night (42% overall, 32.3% from three), it was easy to tell that the squad was in the beginning stages of playing as a unit and putting it all together.

Unfortunately, effort doesn't directly equate to wins, and the Rockets now find themselves on a three-game losing streak, and fourteenth in the Western Conference with a 4-9 record. Their next game comes against a very beatable Detroit Pistons team (with a worse record of 3-11), but the feeling is that there won't be much more time for the team to gel together before the top brass decides whether to play out the rest of the season or begin actively tanking.

Tip-off against Detroit begins on Friday at 6 PM CT.